Friday, April 15, 2016

Yesterday the French prime minister Manuel Valls called for
a ban on the Muslim hijab at French universities. He added that most French
people do not believe that the values of Islam are compatible with the values
of the French Republic.

You might think that Valls is some kind of right wing
fanatic. In fact, he belongs to the French Socialist Party.

One notes, in passing that the Citadel, a military academy
in South Carolina seems to have decided to allow an incoming student to wear a
hijab.

It is true that French leftists, along with conservatives, have
been complicit in allowing their nation to fall prey to Islamist extremism, but
it is also true that after the November 13 attack on Bataclan the French President
Francois Hollande showed a resolve about fighting Islamic terrorism that has
been lacking in America’s own President Obama.

Now, French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, has weighed in
on the question of taking sides in what he calls the war within Islam. Surely,
he is being politic. He should have mentioned that Islamists are at war with the West.

Of course, BHL, as he is commonly called, is very
influential in French intellectual circles. One recalls that he persuaded
former President Sarkozy to intervene in Libya. And one recalls that the Obama administration,
led by then Secretary of State Clinton happily joined the party, leading, as
was their wont, from behind.

I mention the history to point out that BHL is hardly infallible.

And yet, France’s unruly and increasingly dangerous Muslim
population has driven that nation to a crisis point. And BHL has a number of
sensible things to say, even given that most American readers will not be
familiar with all of the intricacies of French politics.

BHL opens by praising Valls for rejecting the temptation to
make excuses for Islamic terrorism. One understands that he also rejects the
noxious habit, endemic to the Obama administration, of responding to each
terrorist attack with a call to stop Islamophobia.

The fault, BHL says, lies with successive French governments,
both liberal and conservative. One notes that Muslims are a large voting bloc
in France—over 10%-- and that they invariably vote for the Socialists. For that
reason the current Socialist government is showing considerable political
courage.

We can take on object lesson from the French experience:

Successive
French governments, over three decades, abdicated responsibility for engaging
in this debate. But while passivity may have ensured social peace in the short
term, it enabled values other than those of the republic to take root in wide
swaths of French cities. And this was followed by willful blindness, as
governments refused to recognize that militant Islamic fundamentalism was
actually Islamo-fascism, the third global variant of totalitarianism that
diehard critics had been decrying for a quarter-century.

Extremists yell more loudly and provide more compelling
images than moderates. Thus, they become the only people that anyone hears. BHL
points out that Western governments have tended to ignore the horrors provoked
by this Islamo-fascism—the fatwa against author Salman Rushdie being one of the
most obvious—and follow a policy of appeasement.

BHL denounces this policy:

Appeasement
of violent radicalism only encourages more of the same. As a consequence, we
find ourselves in an undeclared state of intellectual emergency, one that,
regrettably, has given rise to the states of emergency that our governments
proclaim in the wake of terrorist attacks.

Dealing
with this emergency requires, above all, saying and doing the opposite of what
has most often been said and done. Specifically, we must call a spade a spade.
An Islamist may be a lost Muslim or a Muslim gone astray, but he or she is a
Muslim all the same. We must stop repeating ad nauseam that these aberrant Muslims have “nothing to do
with Islam.”

How can we fight this scourge? BHL continues:

Once we
do that, we must devote ourselves to identifying, untangling, and exposing the
networks of Islamic hate and terror with the same energy and ingenuity that are
now being applied to unraveling the global schemes of tax evaders. How long
will we have to wait for the Panama Papers of Salafism? What is stopping the
great newspapers from flushing out from the dark web the Mossack Fonsecas of
global jihad and its criminal offshore companies?

The great newspapers that were afraid to run caricatures of
the Prophet Mohammed are not very likely to take up the fight against the
Islamists. At least, they are not very likely to do it without the politicians
leading the way. And, as long as the American president is leading the
appeasement brigade, that is unlikely to happen.

BHL suggests that we ought to support those Muslims who are
fighting the jihadis:

We must
also aid, encourage, and ideologically arm Muslims who reject the Islam of hate
in favor of an Islam respectful of women, their faces, and their rights, as
well as of human rights in general. Is that not what we did in the
not-so-distant past with regard to the brave people we called dissidents in the
Soviet world? And were we not right, at the time, to ignore those who told us
that the dissidents were a minority who would never, ever, prevail against the
granite ideology of communism?

Even-handed and neutral is just a nice way to practice
appeasement. Taking sides means that we might not always like the people we are allied
with. And yet, since it’s about taking sides, we ought to support fully the
government of President el Sisi in Egypt. And we ought to join his government in denouncing the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

But, it also means taking sides in the war between the
Palestinian terrorists and the Israelis. Europeans think that by attacking
Israel they can buy some protection from the Islamists. In that they are wrong.
Their attitude has convinced the jihadis that Europeans are weak and soft, sure
losers in this civilizational war.

American politicians who believe that they must be neutral
in the struggle are equally wrong- headed, no matter how tough they appear.

2 comments:

Islam has been officially & theologically at war with the West for 1400 years. The last Military invasion was defeated at Vienna in 1683. The recent invasion is Civilian & demographic. And in terms of Morale.

Sure, they kill each other all the time. Always have. But Islam's goal of World Domination is immutable. Dar al Islam (the house of "peace" or "submission") everywhere. We are Dar al Harb - the house of War.

Oh, we have "allies". Friendly when it suits them. When it doesn't, not friends.

I can't bring myself to believe their honeyed words. Even Dr. Zudi Jasser, who seems like a v good man.

Taqquia (sp) is ubiquitous. Useful. Tactical & Strategic.

Don Rumsfeld: "If there isn't a solution to a problem, it's Not a Problem. It's a condition".

Nixon called him "a ruthless little (5'6" or so) bastard". But I'm on board with Don's Dictum. -- Rich Lara